DeadEcho - Made for You

DeadEcho - Made for You
British duo DeadEcho sneak into Toronto imprint My Favorite Robot's normally exclusive Canadian roster with a five-track EP that subtly subverts its spoken-vocal house competitors in a pleasingly English way. The template may be well-worn, and the title track's circling keys and growling low-end seem fuzzily familiar, but the did-they-really-say-that vocal ebbing into the foreground in waves gives it enough spike to grasp attention. "Milkshake"'s layered words similarly appear to mimic others, the simple arrangement putting them centre stage, but introducing delayed chords that change the tone in a swift swipe and demonstrate a nous beyond simple chart-grabbing, forgotten-next-week ambition.

Remixes complement both tracks, with James Teej's kaleidoscopic talents perking up "Made for You" into a room-filling, rippling houser that keeps the energy teetering on the edge of a drop, but never quite falling into the abyss. Tim Paris' more conventional rework of "Milkshake" still provides muscular support, positioning the vocal at its core and adding beef to the bone. The final original offering, "Speed Demon," completes the picture, its rasping synth patterns and percs replacing lost BPMs with shimmering peaks and troughs. You may have heard this somewhere before, but not often in the way Rob Bradley and Adam Firman have contrived to present it.